Hostess execs just don’t get it

Someone help me figure out who is more ignorant here, then help me put 18,500 Americans back to work, baking American products to be consumed by Americans.

First, let’s blame the Teamsters baking union. Let’s blame them for fighting for the right to employ workers at a livable wage so they in turn can feed and house their families. What are people thinking when they want to do what’s right for themselves and their sons and daughters?

So how does the union justify their actions when they can’t convince their people that life with jobs is 1,000 percent better than life without by carefully examining all the options and coming to an agreement with Hostess. Let’s be sure the union knows they have failed their membership and failure here is not an option.

Second, let’s blame Hostess management for insisting the only way they can get out of this bind is to file for liquidation and sell off their incredibly valuable assets. How about employing the simplest of sales techniques in selling your customers the value of what you bring to the table each and every day with the stocking of product, the setting up of displays, the turning and managing of inventories? Any sales management team who can’t convince their customers that these valued services come at a cost, while facing commodity price increases, should first and foremost be fired.

While we’re at it, let’s also make sure we fire any executive whose plan it is to close it up and sell it off — that’s not a plan, that’s a complete failure to get the job done. I find it infuriating that 18,500 people are being tossed aside by two groups that just don’t get it and couldn’t care less about their company, their people and their customers.

Gregg Bettcher

Wheaton